May 9, 2023 • 51 mins
Recorded on 4/26/23. Child labor violations are on the rise, while some states are trying to loosen child labor laws. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with investigative reporter for the New York Times, Hannah Dreier, and the Chief Programs Officer for Justice for Migrant Women, Norma Flores López, to discuss why the number of unaccompanied minors entering the United States has climbed since the pandemic, the types of unsafe working conditions these kids face, how the Department of Health and Human Services has failed to place them in safe environments, and what impact this has on children’s education, health, and overall sense of worth. Norma also recounts her time working in the fields as early as 9 years old.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, what's up. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast
that goes deeper into topics and discussions that we've had
on the Daily Show. I'm your host, Roy Wood Junior.
This is what this podcast is. Like. I have to
explain this every week because we always got new people,
you know, checking in on this podcast. This podcast like. Okay,
so the Daily Show is waffles, right, this podcast is
(00:29):
the whipped cream and the strawberries and the butter and
the syrup and the bacon and all that extra stuff
you foul onto it to make it really delicious. And
the truth is it's not even breakfast. It's technically dessert.
Why is there ice cream on my breakfast plate? Okay,
I feel like I went a little too deep right there.
Today we are talking about the issue of child labor
(00:52):
and the rise of child labor violations and how some
states are actually trying to loosen those laws. Clue.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Some state legislators, looking to fill a needed in the
labor market are considering child workers as a solution. Lawmakers
in Iowa and Minnesota introduce bills last month to loosen
labor regulations around age and workplace safety. Minnesota's bill would
allow sixteen and seventeen year olds to work construction jobs,
and the Iowa Measureer aims to allow fourteen and fifteen
(01:22):
year olds to work certain positions in the mining, meat packing,
and logging industries. The Iowa proposal would also shield businesses
from civil liability if a youth worker gets sick, injured,
or killed on the job.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
We're doing great, everybody.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
They're gonna let fourteen year olds work in mining, logging,
and meatpacking. Those are like the three most dangerous jobs.
But they didn't have any openings in the Ukrainian Army.
And I'm sure this will surprise you, but the lawmakers
sponsoring these bills call themselves pro life.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Of course they are.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
If women aren't.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Forced to have babies, who's going to pack this guy? Damn.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Meet to go a little bit deeper into this topic,
we are joined by a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter
at the New York Times. She broke the story about
migrant child labor across the United States. Hannah Dreyer. Welcome
to Beyond the Scenes. How do you do?
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Happy to be here?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, I'm happy that you're here to talk about this
thrilling and light topic. I think We'll get through it
just fine. Also joining us as the Chief Programs Officer
for Justice for Migrant Women, the domestic chair of the
Child Labor Coalition, and a former child farm worker, Norma
Flores Lopez. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Norma, Hi, thank you for having me. Happy to be
the sprinkles on your breakfast waffle.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Well, thank you. See that's what I'm talking about. That's
what we need positivity because this is a serious topic. Hannah,
I'd like to start with you, though you spoke with
what was it about one hundred child migrant workers across
twenty states. How did they end up in the situations
that you saw the Manhannah.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
So, we're based on seeing an unprecedented rise in children
crossing the border without their parents. Right now, we've seen
almost three hundred thousand of these kids come across just
in the past year two years. And when a child
crosses the border alone, what happens is they go to
a shelter run by the government, and then workers in
(03:19):
that shelter try to figure out, well, where can this
kid go? And they eventually end up, usually with a cousin,
an uncle, maybe somebody from their village. They're released to
these adults who are supposed to take care of them
and send them to school. And what I found is
that in the majority of cases, these kids are actually
being put to work. So they're working overnight shifts at slaughterhouses,
(03:41):
They're working in these really industrial settings and factories making cheerios.
And we're seeing this in a way that we really
haven't seen, you know, maybe for one hundred years. This
is something that was going on in the nineteen thirties
and was banned by child labor laws and is not
supposed to be happening.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
What were some of the first hand things that you saw,
you know, with the children and what they were dealing
with in those actual working conditions. So we know how
they got here, we know how they kind of get
dispersed out into these places. What is some of the
work that you've seen them get into.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
It's really dangerous work.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
And like you say, I talked to more than one
hundred kids who are currently underage and currently working in
jobs that they should never be in, like the most
dangerous kind of work. I talked to a boy in
Florida who came over when he was twelve a year
or two ago, and he was released to somebody, you know,
who had been a neighbor, and the very next day
(04:40):
he was put to work in roofing. So I hung
out with him on the top of a three story building.
He was putting up the roof and he was sort
of teetering on the edge. He'd already fallen twice doing
this work. He told me that he really wanted to
go to school to learn to read, but there was
just no way because he had to pay rent, he
had to pay off a debt this man who had
(05:00):
taken him in. I talked to a fourteen year old
who got his arm mangled working overnight at a poultry plant.
And this is a kid who came when he was fourteen.
He got this job and one night, you know, his
arm got caught in the machinery and he just got
pulled through the factory. And he told me that he
was in the hospital for three days, and nobody came
(05:22):
to visit him, because they're just very, very on their own.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
NORMA walk us through your journey in becoming a farm
worker as a child, Like, how many of those dots
did Hannah? Like, how many how many of those a's
and te's of yours did Hannah? A cross in her
own journey. Was your journey into that path a little different?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Well, I think what we first need to talk about
is this term migrant. The folks that Hannah had spoken
to were children that had crossed international borders. I grew
up in South Texas in the Rio Grand Valley. This
is somewhere where I was born in the United States.
My parents were also born, but we were born into
a migrant family, and that we would still travel across
(06:05):
the US following the harvests in order for my parents
to be able to work. That was something that I
grew up my entire life and didn't know any different.
It wasn't something that was introduced to later on in
my life, but rather part of our everyday life of
having to pick up all of our belongings back into
the back of a pickup truck, drive up two days
(06:25):
to go up to the northern States like Michigan, Colorado, Iowa,
Indiana and work in agriculture out there. So while there's
that distinction about how I started and that's the same
way my parents started working in the fields, there are
some themes of what sort of runs across And what
(06:46):
you'll notice is that with migrant families with migrant children,
you don't have the support network. You're living in rural
communities where you're isolated, where there's language barriers, and the
one thing that sort of ties us all together is
the best poverty that pushes us to be out there
in the fields. I was working alongside my parents, something
that was perfectly legal for me to do in the
(07:07):
United States where I was born. Yeah, I started working.
Probably my earliest memories were around nine years old. I
say that because what you'll notice is that a lot
of people that start working in agriculture, they start with play.
When you're working in peace rate, you're encouraged to have
as many hands as possible to be able to fill
(07:28):
up buckets. And then my dad, who was the primary
name on I guess the paycheck. He would then be
paid for all of our work and how much we
all harvest it. So it was easy to sort of
sneak in there and start off with who would fill
up the bucket the fastest. My parents didn't have somebody
to watch us around their work schedule in those rural
(07:50):
areas that they could be able to afford, so they
took us with them. What they thought was the safest option.
And then once I turned twelve years old, I started
working full time. Full time? Was it eight to five
Monday through Friday? For me? It was ten twelve hour days,
seven days a week, sometimes three four a week straight
without any days off. Working in one of the most
(08:11):
dangerous industries, which is agriculture, doing backbreaking work and having
to keep up with the rest of the adults.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
In your family. Then what did what did playtime look
like for you as a child, just if there was
an off day, what does a child who is working
forty hours excuse me, fifty hour weeks smelling light.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
More like seventy or like seventy eighty hour work weeks
at the age of twelve having to do that type
of work. I mean, like with any kid, you're going
to give them chores or tasks and you're going to
make the best of it. So we would race each other,
we would play pranks on each other, we would sing songs,
we would have long conversations and pretend time. But it
(08:59):
was all while having to harvest fruits and vegetables and
under a hot sun. It was just part of our
way of life. And you just make the best and
created the best memories you could with what you were given.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
How has our government failed to protect children from this
type of abuse? Let's just call it what it is.
I'm not even sure if I like the word child
labor as much as abuse. But what are some of
the ways, Hannah, that our government has failed? You know
when we talk about the Department of Health and Human
(09:32):
Services specifically and what they haven't haven't done?
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Yeah, I mean, it's really sort of a cascading failure,
Like you don't get this kind of shadow laborforce without
a lot of system breakdowns. And with Health and Human Services,
this is the agency that is responsible for migrant children.
These kids, they're here with sort of a complicated legal status.
They're not here illegally, but they also don't have a visa,
(09:58):
and so in this sort of g Health and Human
Services is supposed to step up and make sure that
they're not trafficked or exploited. But what happens is they
get released from these shelters and then there's no follow up.
So it's not like the foster care system where you're
placed in a home, but a social worker is going
to see that home and get.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
A check on you.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
These kids get released and then for the majority of them,
nobody ever comes to see how they're doing. Nobody even
really calls to see how they're doing. And that's something
that might now change. There's a lot of pressure to
at least give these kids a couple months of social workers,
a couple months of maybe legal services, but for now
(10:38):
there's just sort of no one looking out for them
once they're out in this country, living with in a
lot of cases, the stranger.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Why isn't AHHS properly investigating what's happening with these children?
Speaker 6 (10:51):
And to understand what went wrong, we have to go
back to twenty twenty one, when a record number of
these children started crossing the border. We're talking about hundreds
of thousands of kids in the last two years, and
so many kids were crossing that they ran out of
room at the Health and Human Services shelters, and the
(11:11):
kids started backing up in Customs and Border Protection jails.
So you might remember, there was wall to wall coverage
of these kids sleeping on the floor, sleeping under those
illuminum blankets. Right. It was like the beginning of the
Biden administration, and all of a sudden, we saw kids
in cages again, and so there was huge pressure to
get these kids released to sponsors more quickly, and Javier Viscera,
(11:35):
the Secretary of HHS, started telling staff members, this is
no way to run an assembly line. If Henry Ford
had run his factories like this, he would never have
been rich and famous. He was braiding them every day
to get these kids released more quickly, and what you
saw was a lot of these kids got released to
people who never should have been able to take them
(11:56):
in because they turned right around and put them to work.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So the bureaucracy was, let's just get this, let's just
make it somebody so it's an mby. It's just I
don't want these kids here, so let me hot potato
them off to somebody else and then it looks like
I've done my job.
Speaker 6 (12:13):
There was huge pressure to address this really visible crisis
at the border with the kids sleeping on the floor,
and this other crisis of child labor is basically invisible.
There's never going to be you know, news footage of
the kids working the overnight shift in the factory. All
of that is happening behind closed doors.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So then if there's nobody doing the follow ups, then normal,
then there has to be laws. This is the country.
There's laws that I'd worked, never walked, y'all through my
childhood experience. I worked. I've worked at Birmingham, Alabama. The
subway on twentieth Street South Pickwick Subway. It's gone now.
I think it's a nightclub. But you were only supposed
(12:54):
to work twenty hours a week. You couldn't work past
nine pm on a school night, you couldn't work past
ten pm on the weekend, and blah blah blah blah blah.
Even I was sneaking and working forty two hours when
my father passed my senior year of high school, and
to help my mom keep the house after he died
because we lost his half of the income. I was
working forty hours a week in high school. So as
(13:14):
a child who wanted to break the rules, I could
break the rules and nobody was enforcing it. So if
someone wanted to force children into working even more, and
you're saying, Hannah, there's nobody checking up on them, well,
then what laws are in place normal that should have
even been keeping this from happening to begin with.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
In the fields, we know that the laws are only
as good as they are enforced, and so if they
weren't enforced in an urban subway. Even less laws are
enforced out in the fields. And that's part of the
issue of why there's so much exploitation that happens for
migrant workers as a whole, especially women, especially children and
(13:54):
young girls that are vulnerable to the dangerous industry. But
then there's also the work is harassment, there's the pesticides
that are used, There's all kinds of issues that happen,
and for folks that are undocumented and makes them even
more vulnerable. I didn't have that particular issue, as I mentioned,
but I wasn't protected from a lot of the other issues.
And so when you have laws that are already in
(14:17):
place that are inadequate, and those aren't being actually followed
through where people like you could make the choice to
just work more hours, it just shows you how they're
failing to protect even those that there are. Sometimes you
run into bad players, people that do want to put
profits over the livelihood, over the well being of the
(14:38):
people that they're employing, and there's really nothing to be
able to protect them. And even then these particular laws
that we're talking about that are supposed to protect workers
under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Those are the ones
that were left already back in the nineteen thirties, which
we know where our country was and how it felt
about people that looked like me, people that were brown,
people that were black.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I'm just saying in America has a history of racism normal.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I absolutely am saying that. And so we're many of
the politicians back in those days that were very blatant
about it and said, this is why we're setting up
the system as it is. And they've left out farm
workers from a lot of these protections, from the right
to unionize, from overtime pay, and from the protections of
child labor laws. So you already have inadequate laws that
(15:24):
were set up in nineteen thirties that have not been
updated and do not keep up with today's standards. We
have an industry that has been using more and more
chemicals and heavier machinery and much more dangerous for children
to be in the deadliest industry for children to work in.
And then you have nobody keeping an eye on this
net and places like the Department of Labor making the
cuts to the budgets for those that are supposed to
(15:47):
be tasked with enforcing and even when the enforcement happens,
which growers. It's no secret that they know that the
chance of them getting caught are little tone a lot
of the times those fines aren't being collected altogether. So
as you can see, it's a failure for even kids
like me who are born in the US, working alongside
our parents, we're still not getting protected and don't really
have a lot of recourse.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
Ry.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
If I could add to something, Norma said, absolutely, I mean,
you were working in a subway. That's a job where
children should be allowed to work at a certain point,
maybe not the hours that you were.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I was working at two in the morning on Friday
nights in the bar district. It's sixteen years old.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
That's not allowed.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
But a lot of these kids that I was talking
to want to work at places like restaurants or grocery stores.
Like they told me, they wish they could get a
job doing fast food, but they can't unless they have
a work permit. And so that goes back to this
idea of services for these kids. If these kids had
the lawyers, they could easily apply for a work permit
and at least not work. You know, the graveyard shift
(16:49):
at the Chicken plant. But because they don't have that
piece of paper, they sort of get relegated to the
most dangerous jobs that nobody will take.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And so I also want to point out though adding
to it, Hannah, it's talk about and what you pointed
out to Roy and what I had also is the
driver for me to work those hours that we knew
were beyond what was good for us was because we
needed money. And that's really what's driving these children, both
those that are crossing international borders or myself. It's the
(17:20):
need for money that we're willing to put ourselves in
known dangers. And there are not laws or safeguards that
are protecting us from that or any other solutions addressing
the very drivers of these issues.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
But with the federal labor law protections, how do we
get how do we close those loopholes? Because I'm assuming
that there ain't no health care in any of this.
I'm assuming there's no overtime. You're doing seventy hours, You're
not getting time and a half for picking asparagus. I
would assume that right now. Okay, So then how do
(17:55):
we close those loopholes?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Those are the responsibility of our life officials and this
administration there are steps they can take, there are laws
that they can change, they can update them. We have
the data to show that these are dangerous jobs for
children that can cost them even their lives and affecting
their school, affecting their health, and nobody is doing anything
because it hasn't been that big of an issue. Thanks
(18:20):
to Hannah's story, we've been able to start talking about
child labor in America, but for the longest time it's
been our dirty little secret. We're putting millions of dollars
to address this around the world, but we're not doing
anything to protect the children that are here in the US,
in our own backyards.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
After the break, I want to get into it with
you ladies about the actual world of the work and
how it affects the children on the day to day
when they're in those environments, and not just the physical
harm that they face on the job, but what other
dangers might even be around them while they're doing this
(18:58):
type of work. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be
right back. Welcome back to beyond the scenes. We're talking
child labor in the United States and why it's so rampant,
why it's legal, and what things we could do to
stop this. Now, before we get into the actual emotional
fallout and the ripple effects of this and the psyche
(19:20):
of the children that do this work, here's a broad
a question. You know, we talked a little bit in
the previous break about loopholes that exist in some of
these laws that don't protect farm workers or children. Handle
why the hell hasn't this administration done anything to stop
this shit?
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Respectfully, I have the same question.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
So we ran a story about migrandchild labor in this
country on February twenty fifth. On February twenty seventh, the
Biden administration announced a huge draft of reforms that they said,
we're going to target this problem. They said they'd never
heard about this before, they were completely shocked, and they
were going to step up and start trying to help
these kids. And so I was wondering, well, how could
(20:05):
that really be? I mean, if I found these kids
working in every state in this country, the Biden administration
didn't know a thing and reporting this out. It turns
out they were being warned about this almost since day one.
There were memos that went up, There were reports about
clusters of children working overnight shifts in poultry plants and
(20:26):
auto factories that made it all the way to the
desk of you know, Susan Rice, Biden's top immigration advisor.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
And what they say.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
Is, oh, yeah, there was evidence here and there, but
we didn't put the pieces together. To me, it's been
really surprising that the administration's line is what we just
never knew.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Would it be better to just go yeah, we need
them kids capitalism. I would respect that more than go home,
no doubt.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
I mean, now you're getting into what some of these
states are doing. But yeah, they are whistleblowers who say
we tried to warn the Biden administration. They've shown me
their memos, they've shown me their emails, and they're saying clearly.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
We're really worried.
Speaker 6 (21:09):
This is really serious and nothing happened until you know,
two months ago.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Norma, if you can tell me a little bit about
some of the other children that you met on these
jobs that you were working as a child, and their
journey from then till now, what were some of the
psychological effects then versus more chronically from people doing that work,
(21:35):
Because if you're not getting a good education, are you
dealing with a sense of a lack of self worth?
When you get older from not having that type of education. Also,
was there any type of abuse happening and the actual
act of working seventy hours as abuse. But in addition
to that, talk to me a little bit about the
(21:57):
conditions and the psyche child of child workers and also
how those things kind of I guess infect one's matriculation
into adulthood.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Well, I saw the prime example with my parents. As
I mentioned, both of my mom and my dad were
us born, but my father had to get out of
school at sixth grade, my mother in the second grade,
and because their family was living in such desperate poverty,
they just spent the rest of their lives working in
the fields in rural communities, just sort of flying under
(22:27):
the radar, without anybody so much as questioning why they
weren't in school. We knew the answer the same way
that buy the administration knows the answer. It's because there
are families that are living in that level of poverty.
And so that was what condemned my parents to have
to work for the rest of their lives in the
fields because they didn't know, they didn't get their education,
(22:48):
they didn't have the English language skills, they didn't have
anybody looking after them and their families needed to eat.
And that's the great irony in this country is that
the very people that are tasked with prepared and planting
and growing and harvesting our fruits and vegetables, I can't
many times afford those same very fruits and vegetables that
they picked for everybody else. And so I saw that
(23:11):
through my parents. My father made us aware of the
sacrifices they had to make because they didn't have an education,
and made it a point to make sure that me
and my sisters, even though we spent our years working
in the fields from when we were twelve years old
all the way until we graduated from high school, pointed
out that this was going to be our future. Even
(23:32):
at sixteen years old, I had already had moments run
ins with crew leaders, which are infamous for being very tough,
very hard on folks, and driving the profits for the farmers.
I had a crew leader that on a daily basis,
would curse me out, would tell me that I was worthless,
would tell me that if I couldn't even do farm work,
what was that good for? And I was going to
(23:53):
mount to nothing. And this was on a daily basis
to a sixteen year old child. But I knew that
my parents needed that job because at least in this
job they got paid a little bit better than the
other ones. At least in this job they provided a
housing that was in chicken coops that had the bathrooms
closer by, versus the previous place we worked at that
had the shower in the basement and outhouses that we
(24:14):
had to use even though we were reading the two thousands,
and so I knew it was a better place for
my family, and that was something that I sort of
swallowed my pride and just took the beatings on a
daily basis. That same crew leader, in the exact same
day would run into his white colleagues and the white
teenagers that were working for the local community and would
be all smiles and sunshines and super helpful, but with
(24:36):
me would just completely turn around into a totally different person.
So these are the types of situations that I would
see in front of me about how it was such
a different reality for me versus other white kids that
grew up on their dad's farm or on their neighbor's
farm and got to do it as a part time
job or as a vocational training or sort of, you know, just.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
To earn a little bit of extra cash.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Mine was for survival, and so I had to deal
with a lot of that, and luckily I didn't have
to deal with the sexual assaults or harassment that many
women do. But I did see it around me where
women are asked to do sexual favors to even just
get their paycheck, where young girls are asked to do
that so that their families can get paid the money
that they're owed, and there isn't a whole lot of enforcement,
(25:20):
a whole lot of information where a lot of these
women and girls think that's just the way of business
up here in the US, where they have to do
that in order to be able to get paid. And
so you see a lot of these abuses happening in
the workplace that are well known, well documented, and nobody
moving for policies. And for those kids that are trying
(25:40):
to make their way out and climb out, it's really
hard in school when you're having to go to two
three different schools every year, a first day over and
over again, where you're not able to participate in a
lot of the recreational activities, a lot of fun time.
You don't get a summer or a spring break. Those
are times that are spent working in the fields. I
never learned how to swim. I never learned how to
play an instrument. I just had to work my butt
(26:03):
off every single day in the in school to make
sure I didn't end up and having to perpetuate the
cycle like many of my other friends family members that
did who dropped out and having to be pulled constantly,
always being behind in school. You could see why they
drop out at four times a national average for farm
work or youth, and so so many of my friends
(26:24):
and family members ended up back in the fields. That's
where their children are growing up in the fields. And
we just continue to see the cycle of poverty and
exploitation just continuing generation after generation.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So we know all of that to be true. Why
are states trying to loosen child labor laws?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Like?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Why do more? Oh that sounds great, more of that please,
But also, by the way, don't know drag queens in
school and don't learn about black history because I could
poison your mind. I get your ass out there in
that field. Why are some of the states tanner? Why
are they trying to loosen the child labor laws?
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable. So we're seeing sort of
out of nowhere a raft of states pushing back child
labor laws, and they're making it legal for kids to
do things like work overnight at fourteen, work with an
assembly line at fifteen years old. And part of this
goes back to the labor shortage. I mean, this is
(27:26):
what's pushing the migrant child crisis as well. It's sort
of two things at once. More children are coming over
without their parents, but also these companies suddenly really need
somebody working these shifts that nobody wants.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Is it a labor shortage or wage shortage?
Speaker 5 (27:43):
Yeah, good question.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
I think what we can safely say is there's a
lot of jobs right now that pay badly, have bad
working conditions. They're overnight shifts usually, and people don't want
to take those jobs. They've found that they can do
other jobs that pay more, and so employers are scrambling
and many of them have said to me, you know,
(28:06):
we went to that staffing agency that brought in all
those children because we couldn't find anybody to do this shift.
And so states are sort of trying to codify this
right now and just say, well, yeah, why not let
the fourteen year old come and do that overnight shift,
you know, legally, it's really shocking.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
How do they defend in your views, how are politicians
defending it? Is this the type of policy that politicians
are trying to publicize because it feels like one of
those policies that they're kind of sliding and under their
breath because like CRT, it's hey, we got to stop it. Hey, y'all,
look at what they're teaching your children in the schools,
(28:47):
but with child labors. Yeah, by the way, your kid
can work to two in the morning and dat o
factory instead. I got to go to school in the morning.
So why aren't they it's vocal about this as they
are all of these other lightning ride issues.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
I mean, the Washington Post had great reporting recently about
where these child labor law rollbacks are coming from, and
they traced a lot of them to this one billionaire
backed group out of Florida, which is where a lot
of things seem to come from these days. That's going
around different states and pushing this legislation. Make of that
what you will, but.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
This is what happens when you live in a country
that puts profits over people. You're seeing this sort of
rollback not just in the child labor laws, but pretty
much in any workplace protections in safeguards. You have people
that are pushing back on any sort of restrictions because
they blame businesses not being able to do the work
that they need to do because of said protections and restrictions.
(29:39):
But what we see every day is that they are
absolutely necessary to keep people safe. What you're not hearing
from advocates is, you know, all children should be banned
from every place. What we're saying is that children need
to be in places that are safe, at safe hours,
doing tasks that are safe that are not going to
cost them their lives. But instead you have as people
(30:00):
turning a blind eye while these children are sacrificing their health,
their education, their well being, their childhoods. They're not having
any of that. And at the end of the day,
what's at the root of it is the people needing
to put people over profits, and that's not what we're
seeing right now.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Are people buying into the spin on this, Like if
we're talking about this billionaire you know, seapack or whatever
type group it is down there, there's some people that
are putting the spin on this and going, oh, well,
you're fourteen, but this is an apprenticeship and then you'll
get the real job when you're eighteen and you're learning
(30:38):
a trade, you're learning responsibilities and values and apprenticeship. Does
that fly or is that bullshit propaganda?
Speaker 6 (30:48):
You know, that's exactly what a lot of these sponsors
have told me when I've asked them why they have,
you know, four children in their home and all of
them are working full time and not going to school.
They come with that same sort of rhetoric of like.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Explaining the sponsorship first before we even get into the spin.
Sure walk us through that.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
So when a child crosses the border alone, they go
to the Health and Human Services shelter system, and then
Health and Human Services releases them to somebody who has
promised to be a responsible adult.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And often what I'm finding.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Is this is going to be somebody who a child's
maybe met on Facebook, maybe they sort of know them
as a family friend, somebody who has told the child, hey,
you can come up here and live with me, and
your life is going to be great and you're going
to live the American dream. And so the child comes
and they get released to this person and then they
(31:44):
find out actually they have to work every day. Often
the sponsor has already found them a place to work.
They're sort of a broker. They're not going to get
to go to school. They're going to be living the
sort of adult life that they could never have imagined.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
What does a sponsor get out of this?
Speaker 6 (31:59):
The sponsors have been really surprisingly willing to talk to me.
I mean, a lot of these kids are essentially in
debt bondage and their sponsors are, you know, in a
very legally dicey situation.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So the sponsors are taking a pinch off the salary.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
The sponsors are getting paid. They charge interest. Some of
them have shown me lists that they've kept of the
kids debt with you know, fifty percent interest dependent. It's
sort of like the kids are in debt and they
could never get out of it just now.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Living with a loan shark or some shit.
Speaker 6 (32:30):
Yeah, yeah, living with the loan shark who you know
said your life was going to be better if you
cross the border.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And now you're here, so you're screwed. So you can't
snitch because you're illegal, and you need the money. So
you have to keep working because you can't go home.
And also we also don't know if the sponsor is.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
Abusive exactly, and you don't speak the language, and you
know you're never going to learn it because you're not
in school, so you're you're just in this very very
isolated place.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Okay, thank you for that digression. Now, the sponsors then
spend this and say, oh, the kid is learning a
skill that will help him matriculate into the American workforce.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
What the sponsors say to me, it sort of sounds
like the same idea of oh, kid needs to work.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
It's good for kids to work.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
You know, they're learning how to be an adult, They're
learning valuable skills like how to clean a you know,
meat processing plant. You're sort of hearing it at both
ends now for me, at least, like talking to these
sponsors and then sort of hearing out in these like
state level political debates. It's this idea like why not
put kids to work?
Speaker 5 (33:38):
It's good for them.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
So then let's follow the money. Then, where where does
loosening these child labor laws benefit the Republican lawmakers that
are trying to get this stuff greenlit. What's their pinch?
Is it the payoffs from the companies that then support
their agendas or help fund their reelection campaigns, Like what
is the motivation for a lawmaker to allow children to
(34:03):
be subjected to this type of shit?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Legally, it goes back to the idea of deregulation, and
that's a very conservative value that we see, especially in
these agricultural communities where they say, folks in DC with
their data and their PhDs don't know our way of
life and can't tell us how to be able to
(34:25):
raise our children. And what they don't understand is that
the ones that end up being left holding the bag
are children that don't have any rights and nobody to
look after them. Even though I spent my life working
in the fields that my parents spent their whole careers
working in the fields, they never had access. I will
(34:46):
never have access to capital, to land, to the actual
opportunities to one day own my own farm. All I
know is how to pick asparagus and how to pick
onions and apples, and that's all I will ever do
because there is no climbing up the professional ladder. That
is just a smoke screen for in reality, what they
just want is to be able to have a cheap
labor force to be able to have cheap products that
(35:09):
they can then have record breaking profits off of. And
it's built on the backs of migrant workers, especially those
that require children. What kind of country are we building
when we need children to have to give up school
to be able to be out there working in those
fields to feed our own families, you know, those healthy
(35:31):
fruits and vegetables. And the final thought that I leave
is how many of those members of Congress, of those
Republicans have their actual children working at the same hours
that I did, doing the same work that I did.
The answer is none of them, and their children won't
ever need to do any of that. And yet they're
going to claim that their children know how the value
(35:51):
of hard work and responsibility and go into adulthood without
needing any of those steps. So that's a good enough
path for them, but not for us children that don't
have any other protections or opportunities. We need to learn
the value of hard work by breaking our backs and
sometimes even giving up our lives.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Okay, So, Hannah, you write this article and it exposes
everything that Norma already knew to be true that the
Biden administration was unaware was true, and they what do
you say. Two days later, they put out the statement
that we're gonna get the work I figure out, we're
gonna get to the bottom of this, which is basically
what the statement said. Was there any fallout with the companies?
(36:33):
Did they round them up? Did the fads show up
to the farm Hannah? Did they show up with the handcuffs,
you know, like in those mob movies where they show
up with the I've got a I've got an arrest
warrant for your whole family and then they took everybody
out the meat plant. Or was it just business as usual?
Speaker 5 (36:49):
I mean, what an image that did not happen.
Speaker 6 (36:52):
The Department of laver is looking into some of the
companies that we named, but with these bigger brands, they
have a lot of deniability. So, for example, we found
kids who were making spicy hot cheetohs and they told
us their lungs were burning. They were working these overnight
shifts with all this sort of spicy dust in the air,
and then going to high school the next day and
(37:14):
trying to sort of make it through their classes and
then working the overnight shift again and occasionally sleeping on
the weekends. And nobody's denying that that happened, but that
was happening at a manufacturer, and Cheetos, the brand is saying, well,
we had no idea that this is who was making
our product for me. It was very easy to find
this out. It was like waiting in the parking lot
(37:35):
watching the shift change and noticing that the people coming
out looked like fourteen and fifteen year olds. So the
Department of Labor is looking into this. There are active investigations,
and it's sort of unclear how far up the chain
it's going to go. But the Biden administration says they're
going to hold the brands to account, which would be
a departure.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
So then it sounds like the brands would play in
the same game that the government is planned and going
we know to ta I just told they just delivered
the spicy dust powdered. Then I make the Cheetohs as
my factory. I didn't know they was doing it. Hey
stop doing that over there. And you're saying that these
corporations should have been doing the due diligence from the
jump to make sure that they were partnering with production
(38:16):
companies that were following the law.
Speaker 6 (38:20):
I mean I can't say what's in people's heads. All
I can tell you is everyone, the politicians, the companies
are shocked and halled. And for me, it was easy
to find these kids, and people like Norma have been
sounding this alarm for years and years.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
But the reality is that the systems are set up
this way to where people have deniability. You have contractors
and subcontractors, and you have crew leaders and different layers,
whether it's in the fields or anywhere else. And that's
how they've been getting around it, because then it becomes
a finger pointing game of they lie to me, they
presented me with false documents, but nobody's ever held accountable,
(38:57):
is what. The short answer is, people keep going around
around the circles, and that's why decades later, you still
have this issue.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
After the break, I want to talk about solutions to
this issue. I feel like we've had a nice fun
time depressing one another, just kind of ping ponging that
ball of sadness around the room. But after the break
we're gonna talk solutions. And I want to talk about Hannah,
what you've been able to do just to make sure
your mental health as well, and Norma you as well.
(39:24):
On the backside of you know of this one, you
being in that journey in too, you investigating that journey.
This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. Welcome
back to beyond the scenes. We're round and third and
headed for home. We are talking about child laboring, why
people want to keep kids working in these factories and
(39:45):
getting abused and keeping them into what I consider to
be a form of legalized enslavement. Let's just call it
what it is. Hannah. You went to factor after factory,
talking to child after child and hearing trauma after trauma.
(40:07):
How have you been able to get better mentally on
the other side of this because the amount of bad
you have to take in to create the article is
probably what quadruple, tin, tuple, that's not a word, Decca, decahedron. Time,
I'm trying to show off my math skills, I'm failing.
(40:29):
What What are some of the things that you were
able to do on the other side of this story
to settle yourself? I mean, how do you Is there
a way?
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (40:40):
Journalists who do sort of trauma reporting, I think have
lots of strategies and they sort of fall into two camps,
and some people get really into wellness and exercise, and
some people are just like at the bar, and I
feel like I'm more in the drinking side of that equation.
But no, I mean, this reporting was so intense, but
(41:01):
it's nothing compared to what these kids are going through.
And like Norma was talking about earlier, their kids, So
a lot of the conversations I was having with them
or about how much they missed their parents or how
worried they were for their future, but they also were
really into like their video games, or really into you know,
the girlfriend who they had or were trying to get,
(41:22):
and they were often sort of silly or sort of
just hanging out, and so that for me was comforting,
Like it was really sort of reassuring to see that
these kids still could do things that were just sort
of normal, silly kids stuff, even as they were in
these really dark circumstances. And that's sort of given me,
you know, comfort, and helped me keep going on this reporting.
(41:44):
The other thing is I think things really might change.
I mean, there have been I think a dozen congressional
letters written about this just since the story ran. There
have been laws introduced to try to make child labor
criminal offense. For the employers, and there's been real change
at the Department of Labor, less at Health and Human Services,
But it's sort of the rare investigation where it seems
(42:04):
like things actually might get better if the pressure is
kept up normal.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
When you reflect on your childhood, are there parts of
it that you still work to reconcile or is it
just an understood thing that just had to be done
for the sake of your family and at least you
all were together.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Like with any other child. Do you think back and
you treasure the stuff that really mattered. I was very
fortunate to be able to be alongside my parents, my
mom and my dad, and so I had their unconditional love,
and through great sacrifices that they made, they made sure
that I was able to get the education they couldn't
and my sister did too, And so I went on
(42:43):
to finish school and be able to change the trajectory
of my life. And now my daughter won't have to
go work in the fields, and now I have access
to healthcare and being able to get a therapist and
being able to through my education. You know, find solace
in amazing authors like my favorite Maya Angelo, who you know,
talks about often about the sort of things that she
(43:06):
witnessed and how that anger could either turn into a
cancer or fuel your passion to being able to right
the wrongs of the world. And so I took that
those experiences and I've been now dedicating my career to
being able to make a difference for migrant workers, for children,
for migrant women people, for my community, and making sure
(43:29):
that people recognize a their humanity. I think that's incredibly
important for us to be able to see that these
are people, as I mentioned, you know, as a kid,
I had the same sort of hopes and dreams and
enjoy that other children did. We were just put in
different circumstances and be making sure that we're keeping up
the pressure. That is the name of the game is.
(43:50):
You know, none of these people are going to do
the right thing just because it's so chose to us.
They would have done it already. And so my job
now is to make sure we keep up this pressure.
And every time that there's these sort of reports that
come out that show any one of these members of
Congress and our government officials about the realities that are
happening out here in the fields, that they are actually
(44:11):
moved to doing something and not just empty words until
the next campaign. And so that's what I've been doing
now to sort of keep me going. And lastly to
being able to just spending more time with my family.
It means so much to me. To being able to
provide for my parents and know that even though they
had no retirement plan as a farm worker, they had
(44:32):
no health care, that I can now provide for them
as a professional, To being able to help them meet
their most basic needs when an emergency comes up, which
is a lot to be said that a lot of
other people who came up in the fields don't have,
and they don't have the mental health support that I did.
You know, I was able to overcome a lot of
(44:53):
the complexes you do get when you're being told day
after day that you're worthless, that you're less than, that
you don't deserve the same protections, are oppportunities that other
children do in this country, And when you're constantly questioned
about how American you are because of my last name,
because I know how to speak Spanish, because I have
brown skin, I'm still constantly having to prove just how
(45:14):
American I am, even though I was born in this country.
My parents are born, my grandparents are naturalized, and yet
somehow I'm still not American enough.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
How can migrant children Hannah seek safe work environments? Now?
What are their options? Now? You know, what are some
of the things that they can do.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
So I have talked to some children who were able
to get a lawyer and apply for a work permit,
and those kids are actually doing great. I mean I
talked to one kid whose job now is to collect
the shopping carts outside of supermarket, which you know, that's
(45:53):
not a great job, but it's much better than what
he was doing. Yeah, and it pays him more, and
he's going through school. He's a straight a student, Like
his life is totally turned around. That's sort of the
rare situation where a child was able to get legal services.
Most of the children are never going to get a
work permit, and so they're always going to be in
these terrible, badly paying jobs. But these are kids who
(46:18):
have a ton of energy, Like they're really proactive people
who came all the way across several countries to come
here in search of usually a better life. So from
what I've seen, when these kids are able to sort
of do those very first steps toward taking care of
themselves and working an easier job, they really thrive.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Okay, So then last question, what do y'all think could
be done to create a lasting change, Because, like we
were talking earlier, Hannah, it's the job of Health and
Human Services to make sure that when these kids come
over that they're in a decent situation. Why are they
checking on the kids to make sure that the bullshit
(47:02):
isn't happening to them.
Speaker 6 (47:04):
So this is one of the changes that the Biden
administration is promising. This is part of that announcement two
days after our story ran about how everything's going to
get better. Now the Department of Health and Human Services
is saying that by twenty twenty four they're going to
provide services to every kid who comes over, and at
some point after that they're going to provide legal services
(47:25):
to every kid. And like Norma was saying, you know,
people say things in the moment and then it's sort
of up to other people to keep the pressure on
and see if that really happens. But in theory, this
is something that the administration is promising to do at
some sort of undetermined point in the future, and we'll
see if it.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Happens, Well, he's running for reelection, so hey, let's finish
the job. I think is that the slogan I'm not
sure I need to double check norma. What do you
propose we could do to make sure that these laws
are being properly enforced across these industries, because it seems
like at the federal level there's still a little bit
of disorganization. To the people that are the parents of
(48:07):
child workers, what options do they have if they are
also migrant workers themselves, what things can they do to
help themselves. Is there a way to blow a whistle
on your own factory?
Speaker 3 (48:18):
There absolutely is, But we need to make sure that
there are the protections in place to keep these whistleblowers
from having all the blowback because oftentimes they're the ones
that feel all of the burden and everybody else walks
away unscathed. But what it comes down to is evening
the playing field, and for that you need comprehensive immigration reform.
(48:39):
You will hear me say it a thousand times. That
is such a huge issue and being able to even
out the playing field to make sure that vulnerable workers
know that they're not going to be separated from their
families that they're not going to be ripped away from
wage earning opportunities for asking for employers to do the
right thing. In addition to that, we also have to
(49:01):
close those loopholes that we've been talking about. It makes
no sense to continue to allow children at such young
ages to work out in agriculture or in other types
of jobs that are so dangerous to them where they're
risking so much, just so that we could be able
to have artificially cheap foods and vegetables. It also makes
no sense for us to feel like we're in more
(49:23):
danger going into the workplace than let's say, a police officer.
And that's what often happens with migrant women. There's pay
and equity where people are not being valued, especially those
migrant women. There are places like the Be Heard Act
that would benefit from a bill like that that would
make sure that women are having the safeguards and the
(49:43):
protections that they need to feel safe at work. And
we also need to make sure that everybody is held
accountable for the violations that they are propagating, whether it's
against women, whether it's against migrant workers, whether it's against children.
Because right now, we do not have that account of
and that takes funding, and that takes commitment, and that
(50:03):
takes really going beyond just the words, but actually putting
into action. Because we have the proposals for bills and
regulations and all kinds of things to make things better,
it just takes political will and that's what seems to
be lacking in Washington, DC right now.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Well, I cannot thank the two of you enough for
getting on and talking about a very very essential topic.
Thank you all so much, Hannah Norma, thank you for
going beyond the scenes with me, and thank you both
for being the sprinkles on top of my dessert WAFFLEI right,
(50:39):
thank you. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes
on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts, wherever you get in walcare. Just listen to it.
Hey, what's up. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast
that goes deeper into topics and discussions that we've had
on the Daily Show. I'm your host, Roy Wood Junior.
This is what this podcast is. Like. I have to
explain this every week because we always got new people,
you know, checking in on this podcast. This podcast like. Okay,
so the Daily Show is waffles, right, this podcast is
(00:29):
the whipped cream and the strawberries and the butter and
the syrup and the bacon and all that extra stuff
you foul onto it to make it really delicious. And
the truth is it's not even breakfast. It's technically dessert.
Why is there ice cream on my breakfast plate? Okay,
I feel like I went a little too deep right there.
Today we are talking about the issue of child labor
(00:52):
and the rise of child labor violations and how some
states are actually trying to loosen those laws. Clue.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Some state legislators, looking to fill a needed in the
labor market are considering child workers as a solution. Lawmakers
in Iowa and Minnesota introduce bills last month to loosen
labor regulations around age and workplace safety. Minnesota's bill would
allow sixteen and seventeen year olds to work construction jobs,
and the Iowa Measureer aims to allow fourteen and fifteen
(01:22):
year olds to work certain positions in the mining, meat packing,
and logging industries. The Iowa proposal would also shield businesses
from civil liability if a youth worker gets sick, injured,
or killed on the job.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
We're doing great, everybody.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
They're gonna let fourteen year olds work in mining, logging,
and meatpacking. Those are like the three most dangerous jobs.
But they didn't have any openings in the Ukrainian Army.
And I'm sure this will surprise you, but the lawmakers
sponsoring these bills call themselves pro life.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Of course they are.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
If women aren't.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Forced to have babies, who's going to pack this guy? Damn.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Meet to go a little bit deeper into this topic,
we are joined by a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter
at the New York Times. She broke the story about
migrant child labor across the United States. Hannah Dreyer. Welcome
to Beyond the Scenes. How do you do?
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Happy to be here?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, I'm happy that you're here to talk about this
thrilling and light topic. I think We'll get through it
just fine. Also joining us as the Chief Programs Officer
for Justice for Migrant Women, the domestic chair of the
Child Labor Coalition, and a former child farm worker, Norma
Flores Lopez. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Norma, Hi, thank you for having me. Happy to be
the sprinkles on your breakfast waffle.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Well, thank you. See that's what I'm talking about. That's
what we need positivity because this is a serious topic. Hannah,
I'd like to start with you, though you spoke with
what was it about one hundred child migrant workers across
twenty states. How did they end up in the situations
that you saw the Manhannah.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
So, we're based on seeing an unprecedented rise in children
crossing the border without their parents. Right now, we've seen
almost three hundred thousand of these kids come across just
in the past year two years. And when a child
crosses the border alone, what happens is they go to
a shelter run by the government, and then workers in
(03:19):
that shelter try to figure out, well, where can this
kid go? And they eventually end up, usually with a cousin,
an uncle, maybe somebody from their village. They're released to
these adults who are supposed to take care of them
and send them to school. And what I found is
that in the majority of cases, these kids are actually
being put to work. So they're working overnight shifts at slaughterhouses,
(03:41):
They're working in these really industrial settings and factories making cheerios.
And we're seeing this in a way that we really
haven't seen, you know, maybe for one hundred years. This
is something that was going on in the nineteen thirties
and was banned by child labor laws and is not
supposed to be happening.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
What were some of the first hand things that you saw,
you know, with the children and what they were dealing
with in those actual working conditions. So we know how
they got here, we know how they kind of get
dispersed out into these places. What is some of the
work that you've seen them get into.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
It's really dangerous work.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
And like you say, I talked to more than one
hundred kids who are currently underage and currently working in
jobs that they should never be in, like the most
dangerous kind of work. I talked to a boy in
Florida who came over when he was twelve a year
or two ago, and he was released to somebody, you know,
who had been a neighbor, and the very next day
(04:40):
he was put to work in roofing. So I hung
out with him on the top of a three story building.
He was putting up the roof and he was sort
of teetering on the edge. He'd already fallen twice doing
this work. He told me that he really wanted to
go to school to learn to read, but there was
just no way because he had to pay rent, he
had to pay off a debt this man who had
(05:00):
taken him in. I talked to a fourteen year old
who got his arm mangled working overnight at a poultry plant.
And this is a kid who came when he was fourteen.
He got this job and one night, you know, his
arm got caught in the machinery and he just got
pulled through the factory. And he told me that he
was in the hospital for three days, and nobody came
(05:22):
to visit him, because they're just very, very on their own.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
NORMA walk us through your journey in becoming a farm
worker as a child, Like, how many of those dots
did Hannah? Like, how many how many of those a's
and te's of yours did Hannah? A cross in her
own journey. Was your journey into that path a little different?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Well, I think what we first need to talk about
is this term migrant. The folks that Hannah had spoken
to were children that had crossed international borders. I grew
up in South Texas in the Rio Grand Valley. This
is somewhere where I was born in the United States.
My parents were also born, but we were born into
a migrant family, and that we would still travel across
(06:05):
the US following the harvests in order for my parents
to be able to work. That was something that I
grew up my entire life and didn't know any different.
It wasn't something that was introduced to later on in
my life, but rather part of our everyday life of
having to pick up all of our belongings back into
the back of a pickup truck, drive up two days
(06:25):
to go up to the northern States like Michigan, Colorado, Iowa,
Indiana and work in agriculture out there. So while there's
that distinction about how I started and that's the same
way my parents started working in the fields, there are
some themes of what sort of runs across And what
(06:46):
you'll notice is that with migrant families with migrant children,
you don't have the support network. You're living in rural
communities where you're isolated, where there's language barriers, and the
one thing that sort of ties us all together is
the best poverty that pushes us to be out there
in the fields. I was working alongside my parents, something
that was perfectly legal for me to do in the
(07:07):
United States where I was born. Yeah, I started working.
Probably my earliest memories were around nine years old. I
say that because what you'll notice is that a lot
of people that start working in agriculture, they start with play.
When you're working in peace rate, you're encouraged to have
as many hands as possible to be able to fill
(07:28):
up buckets. And then my dad, who was the primary
name on I guess the paycheck. He would then be
paid for all of our work and how much we
all harvest it. So it was easy to sort of
sneak in there and start off with who would fill
up the bucket the fastest. My parents didn't have somebody
to watch us around their work schedule in those rural
(07:50):
areas that they could be able to afford, so they
took us with them. What they thought was the safest option.
And then once I turned twelve years old, I started
working full time. Full time? Was it eight to five
Monday through Friday? For me? It was ten twelve hour days,
seven days a week, sometimes three four a week straight
without any days off. Working in one of the most
(08:11):
dangerous industries, which is agriculture, doing backbreaking work and having
to keep up with the rest of the adults.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
In your family. Then what did what did playtime look
like for you as a child, just if there was
an off day, what does a child who is working
forty hours excuse me, fifty hour weeks smelling light.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
More like seventy or like seventy eighty hour work weeks
at the age of twelve having to do that type
of work. I mean, like with any kid, you're going
to give them chores or tasks and you're going to
make the best of it. So we would race each other,
we would play pranks on each other, we would sing songs,
we would have long conversations and pretend time. But it
(08:59):
was all while having to harvest fruits and vegetables and
under a hot sun. It was just part of our
way of life. And you just make the best and
created the best memories you could with what you were given.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
How has our government failed to protect children from this
type of abuse? Let's just call it what it is.
I'm not even sure if I like the word child
labor as much as abuse. But what are some of
the ways, Hannah, that our government has failed? You know
when we talk about the Department of Health and Human
(09:32):
Services specifically and what they haven't haven't done?
Speaker 6 (09:37):
Yeah, I mean, it's really sort of a cascading failure,
Like you don't get this kind of shadow laborforce without
a lot of system breakdowns. And with Health and Human Services,
this is the agency that is responsible for migrant children.
These kids, they're here with sort of a complicated legal status.
They're not here illegally, but they also don't have a visa,
(09:58):
and so in this sort of g Health and Human
Services is supposed to step up and make sure that
they're not trafficked or exploited. But what happens is they
get released from these shelters and then there's no follow up.
So it's not like the foster care system where you're
placed in a home, but a social worker is going
to see that home and get.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
A check on you.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
These kids get released and then for the majority of them,
nobody ever comes to see how they're doing. Nobody even
really calls to see how they're doing. And that's something
that might now change. There's a lot of pressure to
at least give these kids a couple months of social workers,
a couple months of maybe legal services, but for now
(10:38):
there's just sort of no one looking out for them
once they're out in this country, living with in a
lot of cases, the stranger.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Why isn't AHHS properly investigating what's happening with these children?
Speaker 6 (10:51):
And to understand what went wrong, we have to go
back to twenty twenty one, when a record number of
these children started crossing the border. We're talking about hundreds
of thousands of kids in the last two years, and
so many kids were crossing that they ran out of
room at the Health and Human Services shelters, and the
(11:11):
kids started backing up in Customs and Border Protection jails.
So you might remember, there was wall to wall coverage
of these kids sleeping on the floor, sleeping under those
illuminum blankets. Right. It was like the beginning of the
Biden administration, and all of a sudden, we saw kids
in cages again, and so there was huge pressure to
get these kids released to sponsors more quickly, and Javier Viscera,
(11:35):
the Secretary of HHS, started telling staff members, this is
no way to run an assembly line. If Henry Ford
had run his factories like this, he would never have
been rich and famous. He was braiding them every day
to get these kids released more quickly, and what you
saw was a lot of these kids got released to
people who never should have been able to take them
(11:56):
in because they turned right around and put them to work.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So the bureaucracy was, let's just get this, let's just
make it somebody so it's an mby. It's just I
don't want these kids here, so let me hot potato
them off to somebody else and then it looks like
I've done my job.
Speaker 6 (12:13):
There was huge pressure to address this really visible crisis
at the border with the kids sleeping on the floor,
and this other crisis of child labor is basically invisible.
There's never going to be you know, news footage of
the kids working the overnight shift in the factory. All
of that is happening behind closed doors.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So then if there's nobody doing the follow ups, then normal,
then there has to be laws. This is the country.
There's laws that I'd worked, never walked, y'all through my
childhood experience. I worked. I've worked at Birmingham, Alabama. The
subway on twentieth Street South Pickwick Subway. It's gone now.
I think it's a nightclub. But you were only supposed
(12:54):
to work twenty hours a week. You couldn't work past
nine pm on a school night, you couldn't work past
ten pm on the weekend, and blah blah blah blah blah.
Even I was sneaking and working forty two hours when
my father passed my senior year of high school, and
to help my mom keep the house after he died
because we lost his half of the income. I was
working forty hours a week in high school. So as
(13:14):
a child who wanted to break the rules, I could
break the rules and nobody was enforcing it. So if
someone wanted to force children into working even more, and
you're saying, Hannah, there's nobody checking up on them, well,
then what laws are in place normal that should have
even been keeping this from happening to begin with.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
In the fields, we know that the laws are only
as good as they are enforced, and so if they
weren't enforced in an urban subway. Even less laws are
enforced out in the fields. And that's part of the
issue of why there's so much exploitation that happens for
migrant workers as a whole, especially women, especially children and
(13:54):
young girls that are vulnerable to the dangerous industry. But
then there's also the work is harassment, there's the pesticides
that are used, There's all kinds of issues that happen,
and for folks that are undocumented and makes them even
more vulnerable. I didn't have that particular issue, as I mentioned,
but I wasn't protected from a lot of the other issues.
And so when you have laws that are already in
(14:17):
place that are inadequate, and those aren't being actually followed
through where people like you could make the choice to
just work more hours, it just shows you how they're
failing to protect even those that there are. Sometimes you
run into bad players, people that do want to put
profits over the livelihood, over the well being of the
(14:38):
people that they're employing, and there's really nothing to be
able to protect them. And even then these particular laws
that we're talking about that are supposed to protect workers
under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Those are the ones
that were left already back in the nineteen thirties, which
we know where our country was and how it felt
about people that looked like me, people that were brown,
people that were black.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I'm just saying in America has a history of racism normal.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I absolutely am saying that. And so we're many of
the politicians back in those days that were very blatant
about it and said, this is why we're setting up
the system as it is. And they've left out farm
workers from a lot of these protections, from the right
to unionize, from overtime pay, and from the protections of
child labor laws. So you already have inadequate laws that
(15:24):
were set up in nineteen thirties that have not been
updated and do not keep up with today's standards. We
have an industry that has been using more and more
chemicals and heavier machinery and much more dangerous for children
to be in the deadliest industry for children to work in.
And then you have nobody keeping an eye on this
net and places like the Department of Labor making the
cuts to the budgets for those that are supposed to
(15:47):
be tasked with enforcing and even when the enforcement happens,
which growers. It's no secret that they know that the
chance of them getting caught are little tone a lot
of the times those fines aren't being collected altogether. So
as you can see, it's a failure for even kids
like me who are born in the US, working alongside
our parents, we're still not getting protected and don't really
have a lot of recourse.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
Ry.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
If I could add to something, Norma said, absolutely, I mean,
you were working in a subway. That's a job where
children should be allowed to work at a certain point,
maybe not the hours that you were.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I was working at two in the morning on Friday
nights in the bar district. It's sixteen years old.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
That's not allowed.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
But a lot of these kids that I was talking
to want to work at places like restaurants or grocery stores.
Like they told me, they wish they could get a
job doing fast food, but they can't unless they have
a work permit. And so that goes back to this
idea of services for these kids. If these kids had
the lawyers, they could easily apply for a work permit
and at least not work. You know, the graveyard shift
(16:49):
at the Chicken plant. But because they don't have that
piece of paper, they sort of get relegated to the
most dangerous jobs that nobody will take.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And so I also want to point out though adding
to it, Hannah, it's talk about and what you pointed
out to Roy and what I had also is the
driver for me to work those hours that we knew
were beyond what was good for us was because we
needed money. And that's really what's driving these children, both
those that are crossing international borders or myself. It's the
(17:20):
need for money that we're willing to put ourselves in
known dangers. And there are not laws or safeguards that
are protecting us from that or any other solutions addressing
the very drivers of these issues.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
But with the federal labor law protections, how do we
get how do we close those loopholes? Because I'm assuming
that there ain't no health care in any of this.
I'm assuming there's no overtime. You're doing seventy hours, You're
not getting time and a half for picking asparagus. I
would assume that right now. Okay, So then how do
(17:55):
we close those loopholes?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Those are the responsibility of our life officials and this
administration there are steps they can take, there are laws
that they can change, they can update them. We have
the data to show that these are dangerous jobs for
children that can cost them even their lives and affecting
their school, affecting their health, and nobody is doing anything
because it hasn't been that big of an issue. Thanks
(18:20):
to Hannah's story, we've been able to start talking about
child labor in America, but for the longest time it's
been our dirty little secret. We're putting millions of dollars
to address this around the world, but we're not doing
anything to protect the children that are here in the US,
in our own backyards.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
After the break, I want to get into it with
you ladies about the actual world of the work and
how it affects the children on the day to day
when they're in those environments, and not just the physical
harm that they face on the job, but what other
dangers might even be around them while they're doing this
(18:58):
type of work. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be
right back. Welcome back to beyond the scenes. We're talking
child labor in the United States and why it's so rampant,
why it's legal, and what things we could do to
stop this. Now, before we get into the actual emotional
fallout and the ripple effects of this and the psyche
(19:20):
of the children that do this work, here's a broad
a question. You know, we talked a little bit in
the previous break about loopholes that exist in some of
these laws that don't protect farm workers or children. Handle
why the hell hasn't this administration done anything to stop
this shit?
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Respectfully, I have the same question.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
So we ran a story about migrandchild labor in this
country on February twenty fifth. On February twenty seventh, the
Biden administration announced a huge draft of reforms that they said,
we're going to target this problem. They said they'd never
heard about this before, they were completely shocked, and they
were going to step up and start trying to help
these kids. And so I was wondering, well, how could
(20:05):
that really be? I mean, if I found these kids
working in every state in this country, the Biden administration
didn't know a thing and reporting this out. It turns
out they were being warned about this almost since day one.
There were memos that went up, There were reports about
clusters of children working overnight shifts in poultry plants and
(20:26):
auto factories that made it all the way to the
desk of you know, Susan Rice, Biden's top immigration advisor.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
And what they say.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
Is, oh, yeah, there was evidence here and there, but
we didn't put the pieces together. To me, it's been
really surprising that the administration's line is what we just
never knew.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Would it be better to just go yeah, we need
them kids capitalism. I would respect that more than go home,
no doubt.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
I mean, now you're getting into what some of these
states are doing. But yeah, they are whistleblowers who say
we tried to warn the Biden administration. They've shown me
their memos, they've shown me their emails, and they're saying clearly.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
We're really worried.
Speaker 6 (21:09):
This is really serious and nothing happened until you know,
two months ago.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Norma, if you can tell me a little bit about
some of the other children that you met on these
jobs that you were working as a child, and their
journey from then till now, what were some of the
psychological effects then versus more chronically from people doing that work,
(21:35):
Because if you're not getting a good education, are you
dealing with a sense of a lack of self worth?
When you get older from not having that type of education. Also,
was there any type of abuse happening and the actual
act of working seventy hours as abuse. But in addition
to that, talk to me a little bit about the
(21:57):
conditions and the psyche child of child workers and also
how those things kind of I guess infect one's matriculation
into adulthood.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Well, I saw the prime example with my parents. As
I mentioned, both of my mom and my dad were
us born, but my father had to get out of
school at sixth grade, my mother in the second grade,
and because their family was living in such desperate poverty,
they just spent the rest of their lives working in
the fields in rural communities, just sort of flying under
(22:27):
the radar, without anybody so much as questioning why they
weren't in school. We knew the answer the same way
that buy the administration knows the answer. It's because there
are families that are living in that level of poverty.
And so that was what condemned my parents to have
to work for the rest of their lives in the
fields because they didn't know, they didn't get their education,
(22:48):
they didn't have the English language skills, they didn't have
anybody looking after them and their families needed to eat.
And that's the great irony in this country is that
the very people that are tasked with prepared and planting
and growing and harvesting our fruits and vegetables, I can't
many times afford those same very fruits and vegetables that
they picked for everybody else. And so I saw that
(23:11):
through my parents. My father made us aware of the
sacrifices they had to make because they didn't have an education,
and made it a point to make sure that me
and my sisters, even though we spent our years working
in the fields from when we were twelve years old
all the way until we graduated from high school, pointed
out that this was going to be our future. Even
(23:32):
at sixteen years old, I had already had moments run
ins with crew leaders, which are infamous for being very tough,
very hard on folks, and driving the profits for the farmers.
I had a crew leader that on a daily basis,
would curse me out, would tell me that I was worthless,
would tell me that if I couldn't even do farm work,
what was that good for? And I was going to
(23:53):
mount to nothing. And this was on a daily basis
to a sixteen year old child. But I knew that
my parents needed that job because at least in this
job they got paid a little bit better than the
other ones. At least in this job they provided a
housing that was in chicken coops that had the bathrooms
closer by, versus the previous place we worked at that
had the shower in the basement and outhouses that we
(24:14):
had to use even though we were reading the two thousands,
and so I knew it was a better place for
my family, and that was something that I sort of
swallowed my pride and just took the beatings on a
daily basis. That same crew leader, in the exact same
day would run into his white colleagues and the white
teenagers that were working for the local community and would
be all smiles and sunshines and super helpful, but with
(24:36):
me would just completely turn around into a totally different person.
So these are the types of situations that I would
see in front of me about how it was such
a different reality for me versus other white kids that
grew up on their dad's farm or on their neighbor's
farm and got to do it as a part time
job or as a vocational training or sort of, you know, just.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
To earn a little bit of extra cash.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Mine was for survival, and so I had to deal
with a lot of that, and luckily I didn't have
to deal with the sexual assaults or harassment that many
women do. But I did see it around me where
women are asked to do sexual favors to even just
get their paycheck, where young girls are asked to do
that so that their families can get paid the money
that they're owed, and there isn't a whole lot of enforcement,
(25:20):
a whole lot of information where a lot of these
women and girls think that's just the way of business
up here in the US, where they have to do
that in order to be able to get paid. And
so you see a lot of these abuses happening in
the workplace that are well known, well documented, and nobody
moving for policies. And for those kids that are trying
(25:40):
to make their way out and climb out, it's really
hard in school when you're having to go to two
three different schools every year, a first day over and
over again, where you're not able to participate in a
lot of the recreational activities, a lot of fun time.
You don't get a summer or a spring break. Those
are times that are spent working in the fields. I
never learned how to swim. I never learned how to
play an instrument. I just had to work my butt
(26:03):
off every single day in the in school to make
sure I didn't end up and having to perpetuate the
cycle like many of my other friends family members that
did who dropped out and having to be pulled constantly,
always being behind in school. You could see why they
drop out at four times a national average for farm
work or youth, and so so many of my friends
(26:24):
and family members ended up back in the fields. That's
where their children are growing up in the fields. And
we just continue to see the cycle of poverty and
exploitation just continuing generation after generation.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So we know all of that to be true. Why
are states trying to loosen child labor laws?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Like?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Why do more? Oh that sounds great, more of that please,
But also, by the way, don't know drag queens in
school and don't learn about black history because I could
poison your mind. I get your ass out there in
that field. Why are some of the states tanner? Why
are they trying to loosen the child labor laws?
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable. So we're seeing sort of
out of nowhere a raft of states pushing back child
labor laws, and they're making it legal for kids to
do things like work overnight at fourteen, work with an
assembly line at fifteen years old. And part of this
goes back to the labor shortage. I mean, this is
(27:26):
what's pushing the migrant child crisis as well. It's sort
of two things at once. More children are coming over
without their parents, but also these companies suddenly really need
somebody working these shifts that nobody wants.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Is it a labor shortage or wage shortage?
Speaker 5 (27:43):
Yeah, good question.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
I think what we can safely say is there's a
lot of jobs right now that pay badly, have bad
working conditions. They're overnight shifts usually, and people don't want
to take those jobs. They've found that they can do
other jobs that pay more, and so employers are scrambling
and many of them have said to me, you know,
(28:06):
we went to that staffing agency that brought in all
those children because we couldn't find anybody to do this shift.
And so states are sort of trying to codify this
right now and just say, well, yeah, why not let
the fourteen year old come and do that overnight shift,
you know, legally, it's really shocking.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
How do they defend in your views, how are politicians
defending it? Is this the type of policy that politicians
are trying to publicize because it feels like one of
those policies that they're kind of sliding and under their
breath because like CRT, it's hey, we got to stop it. Hey, y'all,
look at what they're teaching your children in the schools,
(28:47):
but with child labors. Yeah, by the way, your kid
can work to two in the morning and dat o
factory instead. I got to go to school in the morning.
So why aren't they it's vocal about this as they
are all of these other lightning ride issues.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
I mean, the Washington Post had great reporting recently about
where these child labor law rollbacks are coming from, and
they traced a lot of them to this one billionaire
backed group out of Florida, which is where a lot
of things seem to come from these days. That's going
around different states and pushing this legislation. Make of that
what you will, but.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
This is what happens when you live in a country
that puts profits over people. You're seeing this sort of
rollback not just in the child labor laws, but pretty
much in any workplace protections in safeguards. You have people
that are pushing back on any sort of restrictions because
they blame businesses not being able to do the work
that they need to do because of said protections and restrictions.
(29:39):
But what we see every day is that they are
absolutely necessary to keep people safe. What you're not hearing
from advocates is, you know, all children should be banned
from every place. What we're saying is that children need
to be in places that are safe, at safe hours,
doing tasks that are safe that are not going to
cost them their lives. But instead you have as people
(30:00):
turning a blind eye while these children are sacrificing their health,
their education, their well being, their childhoods. They're not having
any of that. And at the end of the day,
what's at the root of it is the people needing
to put people over profits, and that's not what we're
seeing right now.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Are people buying into the spin on this, Like if
we're talking about this billionaire you know, seapack or whatever
type group it is down there, there's some people that
are putting the spin on this and going, oh, well,
you're fourteen, but this is an apprenticeship and then you'll
get the real job when you're eighteen and you're learning
(30:38):
a trade, you're learning responsibilities and values and apprenticeship. Does
that fly or is that bullshit propaganda?
Speaker 6 (30:48):
You know, that's exactly what a lot of these sponsors
have told me when I've asked them why they have,
you know, four children in their home and all of
them are working full time and not going to school.
They come with that same sort of rhetoric of like.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Explaining the sponsorship first before we even get into the spin.
Sure walk us through that.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
So when a child crosses the border alone, they go
to the Health and Human Services shelter system, and then
Health and Human Services releases them to somebody who has
promised to be a responsible adult.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And often what I'm finding.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Is this is going to be somebody who a child's
maybe met on Facebook, maybe they sort of know them
as a family friend, somebody who has told the child, hey,
you can come up here and live with me, and
your life is going to be great and you're going
to live the American dream. And so the child comes
and they get released to this person and then they
(31:44):
find out actually they have to work every day. Often
the sponsor has already found them a place to work.
They're sort of a broker. They're not going to get
to go to school. They're going to be living the
sort of adult life that they could never have imagined.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
What does a sponsor get out of this?
Speaker 6 (31:59):
The sponsors have been really surprisingly willing to talk to me.
I mean, a lot of these kids are essentially in
debt bondage and their sponsors are, you know, in a
very legally dicey situation.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So the sponsors are taking a pinch off the salary.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
The sponsors are getting paid. They charge interest. Some of
them have shown me lists that they've kept of the
kids debt with you know, fifty percent interest dependent. It's
sort of like the kids are in debt and they
could never get out of it just now.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Living with a loan shark or some shit.
Speaker 6 (32:30):
Yeah, yeah, living with the loan shark who you know
said your life was going to be better if you
cross the border.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And now you're here, so you're screwed. So you can't
snitch because you're illegal, and you need the money. So
you have to keep working because you can't go home.
And also we also don't know if the sponsor is.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
Abusive exactly, and you don't speak the language, and you
know you're never going to learn it because you're not
in school, so you're you're just in this very very
isolated place.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Okay, thank you for that digression. Now, the sponsors then
spend this and say, oh, the kid is learning a
skill that will help him matriculate into the American workforce.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
What the sponsors say to me, it sort of sounds
like the same idea of oh, kid needs to work.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
It's good for kids to work.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
You know, they're learning how to be an adult, They're
learning valuable skills like how to clean a you know,
meat processing plant. You're sort of hearing it at both
ends now for me, at least, like talking to these
sponsors and then sort of hearing out in these like
state level political debates. It's this idea like why not
put kids to work?
Speaker 5 (33:38):
It's good for them.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
So then let's follow the money. Then, where where does
loosening these child labor laws benefit the Republican lawmakers that
are trying to get this stuff greenlit. What's their pinch?
Is it the payoffs from the companies that then support
their agendas or help fund their reelection campaigns, Like what
is the motivation for a lawmaker to allow children to
(34:03):
be subjected to this type of shit?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Legally, it goes back to the idea of deregulation, and
that's a very conservative value that we see, especially in
these agricultural communities where they say, folks in DC with
their data and their PhDs don't know our way of
life and can't tell us how to be able to
(34:25):
raise our children. And what they don't understand is that
the ones that end up being left holding the bag
are children that don't have any rights and nobody to
look after them. Even though I spent my life working
in the fields that my parents spent their whole careers
working in the fields, they never had access. I will
(34:46):
never have access to capital, to land, to the actual
opportunities to one day own my own farm. All I
know is how to pick asparagus and how to pick
onions and apples, and that's all I will ever do
because there is no climbing up the professional ladder. That
is just a smoke screen for in reality, what they
just want is to be able to have a cheap
labor force to be able to have cheap products that
(35:09):
they can then have record breaking profits off of. And
it's built on the backs of migrant workers, especially those
that require children. What kind of country are we building
when we need children to have to give up school
to be able to be out there working in those
fields to feed our own families, you know, those healthy
(35:31):
fruits and vegetables. And the final thought that I leave
is how many of those members of Congress, of those
Republicans have their actual children working at the same hours
that I did, doing the same work that I did.
The answer is none of them, and their children won't
ever need to do any of that. And yet they're
going to claim that their children know how the value
(35:51):
of hard work and responsibility and go into adulthood without
needing any of those steps. So that's a good enough
path for them, but not for us children that don't
have any other protections or opportunities. We need to learn
the value of hard work by breaking our backs and
sometimes even giving up our lives.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Okay, So, Hannah, you write this article and it exposes
everything that Norma already knew to be true that the
Biden administration was unaware was true, and they what do
you say. Two days later, they put out the statement
that we're gonna get the work I figure out, we're
gonna get to the bottom of this, which is basically
what the statement said. Was there any fallout with the companies?
(36:33):
Did they round them up? Did the fads show up
to the farm Hannah? Did they show up with the handcuffs,
you know, like in those mob movies where they show
up with the I've got a I've got an arrest
warrant for your whole family and then they took everybody
out the meat plant. Or was it just business as usual?
Speaker 5 (36:49):
I mean, what an image that did not happen.
Speaker 6 (36:52):
The Department of laver is looking into some of the
companies that we named, but with these bigger brands, they
have a lot of deniability. So, for example, we found
kids who were making spicy hot cheetohs and they told
us their lungs were burning. They were working these overnight
shifts with all this sort of spicy dust in the air,
and then going to high school the next day and
(37:14):
trying to sort of make it through their classes and
then working the overnight shift again and occasionally sleeping on
the weekends. And nobody's denying that that happened, but that
was happening at a manufacturer, and Cheetos, the brand is saying, well,
we had no idea that this is who was making
our product for me. It was very easy to find
this out. It was like waiting in the parking lot
(37:35):
watching the shift change and noticing that the people coming
out looked like fourteen and fifteen year olds. So the
Department of Labor is looking into this. There are active investigations,
and it's sort of unclear how far up the chain
it's going to go. But the Biden administration says they're
going to hold the brands to account, which would be
a departure.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
So then it sounds like the brands would play in
the same game that the government is planned and going
we know to ta I just told they just delivered
the spicy dust powdered. Then I make the Cheetohs as
my factory. I didn't know they was doing it. Hey
stop doing that over there. And you're saying that these
corporations should have been doing the due diligence from the
jump to make sure that they were partnering with production
(38:16):
companies that were following the law.
Speaker 6 (38:20):
I mean I can't say what's in people's heads. All
I can tell you is everyone, the politicians, the companies
are shocked and halled. And for me, it was easy
to find these kids, and people like Norma have been
sounding this alarm for years and years.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
But the reality is that the systems are set up
this way to where people have deniability. You have contractors
and subcontractors, and you have crew leaders and different layers,
whether it's in the fields or anywhere else. And that's
how they've been getting around it, because then it becomes
a finger pointing game of they lie to me, they
presented me with false documents, but nobody's ever held accountable,
(38:57):
is what. The short answer is, people keep going around
around the circles, and that's why decades later, you still
have this issue.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
After the break, I want to talk about solutions to
this issue. I feel like we've had a nice fun
time depressing one another, just kind of ping ponging that
ball of sadness around the room. But after the break
we're gonna talk solutions. And I want to talk about Hannah,
what you've been able to do just to make sure
your mental health as well, and Norma you as well.
(39:24):
On the backside of you know of this one, you
being in that journey in too, you investigating that journey.
This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. Welcome
back to beyond the scenes. We're round and third and
headed for home. We are talking about child laboring, why
people want to keep kids working in these factories and
(39:45):
getting abused and keeping them into what I consider to
be a form of legalized enslavement. Let's just call it
what it is. Hannah. You went to factor after factory,
talking to child after child and hearing trauma after trauma.
(40:07):
How have you been able to get better mentally on
the other side of this because the amount of bad
you have to take in to create the article is
probably what quadruple, tin, tuple, that's not a word, Decca, decahedron. Time,
I'm trying to show off my math skills, I'm failing.
(40:29):
What What are some of the things that you were
able to do on the other side of this story
to settle yourself? I mean, how do you Is there
a way?
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (40:40):
Journalists who do sort of trauma reporting, I think have
lots of strategies and they sort of fall into two camps,
and some people get really into wellness and exercise, and
some people are just like at the bar, and I
feel like I'm more in the drinking side of that equation.
But no, I mean, this reporting was so intense, but
(41:01):
it's nothing compared to what these kids are going through.
And like Norma was talking about earlier, their kids, So
a lot of the conversations I was having with them
or about how much they missed their parents or how
worried they were for their future, but they also were
really into like their video games, or really into you know,
the girlfriend who they had or were trying to get,
(41:22):
and they were often sort of silly or sort of
just hanging out, and so that for me was comforting,
Like it was really sort of reassuring to see that
these kids still could do things that were just sort
of normal, silly kids stuff, even as they were in
these really dark circumstances. And that's sort of given me,
you know, comfort, and helped me keep going on this reporting.
(41:44):
The other thing is I think things really might change.
I mean, there have been I think a dozen congressional
letters written about this just since the story ran. There
have been laws introduced to try to make child labor
criminal offense. For the employers, and there's been real change
at the Department of Labor, less at Health and Human Services,
But it's sort of the rare investigation where it seems
(42:04):
like things actually might get better if the pressure is
kept up normal.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
When you reflect on your childhood, are there parts of
it that you still work to reconcile or is it
just an understood thing that just had to be done
for the sake of your family and at least you
all were together.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Like with any other child. Do you think back and
you treasure the stuff that really mattered. I was very
fortunate to be able to be alongside my parents, my
mom and my dad, and so I had their unconditional love,
and through great sacrifices that they made, they made sure
that I was able to get the education they couldn't
and my sister did too, And so I went on
(42:43):
to finish school and be able to change the trajectory
of my life. And now my daughter won't have to
go work in the fields, and now I have access
to healthcare and being able to get a therapist and
being able to through my education. You know, find solace
in amazing authors like my favorite Maya Angelo, who you know,
talks about often about the sort of things that she
(43:06):
witnessed and how that anger could either turn into a
cancer or fuel your passion to being able to right
the wrongs of the world. And so I took that
those experiences and I've been now dedicating my career to
being able to make a difference for migrant workers, for children,
for migrant women people, for my community, and making sure
(43:29):
that people recognize a their humanity. I think that's incredibly
important for us to be able to see that these
are people, as I mentioned, you know, as a kid,
I had the same sort of hopes and dreams and
enjoy that other children did. We were just put in
different circumstances and be making sure that we're keeping up
the pressure. That is the name of the game is.
(43:50):
You know, none of these people are going to do
the right thing just because it's so chose to us.
They would have done it already. And so my job
now is to make sure we keep up this pressure.
And every time that there's these sort of reports that
come out that show any one of these members of
Congress and our government officials about the realities that are
happening out here in the fields, that they are actually
(44:11):
moved to doing something and not just empty words until
the next campaign. And so that's what I've been doing
now to sort of keep me going. And lastly to
being able to just spending more time with my family.
It means so much to me. To being able to
provide for my parents and know that even though they
had no retirement plan as a farm worker, they had
(44:32):
no health care, that I can now provide for them
as a professional, To being able to help them meet
their most basic needs when an emergency comes up, which
is a lot to be said that a lot of
other people who came up in the fields don't have,
and they don't have the mental health support that I did.
You know, I was able to overcome a lot of
(44:53):
the complexes you do get when you're being told day
after day that you're worthless, that you're less than, that
you don't deserve the same protections, are oppportunities that other
children do in this country, And when you're constantly questioned
about how American you are because of my last name,
because I know how to speak Spanish, because I have
brown skin, I'm still constantly having to prove just how
(45:14):
American I am, even though I was born in this country.
My parents are born, my grandparents are naturalized, and yet
somehow I'm still not American enough.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
How can migrant children Hannah seek safe work environments? Now?
What are their options? Now? You know, what are some
of the things that they can do.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
So I have talked to some children who were able
to get a lawyer and apply for a work permit,
and those kids are actually doing great. I mean I
talked to one kid whose job now is to collect
the shopping carts outside of supermarket, which you know, that's
(45:53):
not a great job, but it's much better than what
he was doing. Yeah, and it pays him more, and
he's going through school. He's a straight a student, Like
his life is totally turned around. That's sort of the
rare situation where a child was able to get legal services.
Most of the children are never going to get a
work permit, and so they're always going to be in
these terrible, badly paying jobs. But these are kids who
(46:18):
have a ton of energy, Like they're really proactive people
who came all the way across several countries to come
here in search of usually a better life. So from
what I've seen, when these kids are able to sort
of do those very first steps toward taking care of
themselves and working an easier job, they really thrive.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Okay, So then last question, what do y'all think could
be done to create a lasting change, Because, like we
were talking earlier, Hannah, it's the job of Health and
Human Services to make sure that when these kids come
over that they're in a decent situation. Why are they
checking on the kids to make sure that the bullshit
(47:02):
isn't happening to them.
Speaker 6 (47:04):
So this is one of the changes that the Biden
administration is promising. This is part of that announcement two
days after our story ran about how everything's going to
get better. Now the Department of Health and Human Services
is saying that by twenty twenty four they're going to
provide services to every kid who comes over, and at
some point after that they're going to provide legal services
(47:25):
to every kid. And like Norma was saying, you know,
people say things in the moment and then it's sort
of up to other people to keep the pressure on
and see if that really happens. But in theory, this
is something that the administration is promising to do at
some sort of undetermined point in the future, and we'll
see if it.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Happens, Well, he's running for reelection, so hey, let's finish
the job. I think is that the slogan I'm not
sure I need to double check norma. What do you
propose we could do to make sure that these laws
are being properly enforced across these industries, because it seems
like at the federal level there's still a little bit
of disorganization. To the people that are the parents of
(48:07):
child workers, what options do they have if they are
also migrant workers themselves, what things can they do to
help themselves. Is there a way to blow a whistle
on your own factory?
Speaker 3 (48:18):
There absolutely is, But we need to make sure that
there are the protections in place to keep these whistleblowers
from having all the blowback because oftentimes they're the ones
that feel all of the burden and everybody else walks
away unscathed. But what it comes down to is evening
the playing field, and for that you need comprehensive immigration reform.
(48:39):
You will hear me say it a thousand times. That
is such a huge issue and being able to even
out the playing field to make sure that vulnerable workers
know that they're not going to be separated from their
families that they're not going to be ripped away from
wage earning opportunities for asking for employers to do the
right thing. In addition to that, we also have to
(49:01):
close those loopholes that we've been talking about. It makes
no sense to continue to allow children at such young
ages to work out in agriculture or in other types
of jobs that are so dangerous to them where they're
risking so much, just so that we could be able
to have artificially cheap foods and vegetables. It also makes
no sense for us to feel like we're in more
(49:23):
danger going into the workplace than let's say, a police officer.
And that's what often happens with migrant women. There's pay
and equity where people are not being valued, especially those
migrant women. There are places like the Be Heard Act
that would benefit from a bill like that that would
make sure that women are having the safeguards and the
(49:43):
protections that they need to feel safe at work. And
we also need to make sure that everybody is held
accountable for the violations that they are propagating, whether it's
against women, whether it's against migrant workers, whether it's against children.
Because right now, we do not have that account of
and that takes funding, and that takes commitment, and that
(50:03):
takes really going beyond just the words, but actually putting
into action. Because we have the proposals for bills and
regulations and all kinds of things to make things better,
it just takes political will and that's what seems to
be lacking in Washington, DC right now.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Well, I cannot thank the two of you enough for
getting on and talking about a very very essential topic.
Thank you all so much, Hannah Norma, thank you for
going beyond the scenes with me, and thank you both
for being the sprinkles on top of my dessert WAFFLEI right,
(50:39):
thank you. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes
on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
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